After a lot of preparation, the new web-site of the Microwave Sensing, Signals and Systems (MS3) group is on-line. Currently it is located on address radar.ewi.tudelft.nl and becomes a part of the Departments of Microelectronics new website.

General news:

Being already on vacation at Livingstone, Zambia, Teun de Groot published on YouTube his video-presentation "Mission-driven Resource Management Demonstration"

In the framework of the STARS project we developed at the TU Delft a novel optimization method to automatically configure reconfigurable sensing systems within an end-user's mission. This video demonstrates the method for deployment phase. More information is provided in my PhD dissertation, that can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.4233/uuid:a9a9b8.

Technology news:

It is my pleasure to invite you to the defence of my dissertation on Thursday the 5th of March in the Senaatszaal of the Aula. The defence will start at 12:00 with an informal presentation of about 15 minutes. At 12:30 the formal part of the defence will start. After the defence, a short reception will also be given.

Some information about my thesis:

Cover page of the PHD thesis 'Sensor management for surveillance and tracking. An operational perspective' by Fotios Katsilieris

Title:Sensor management for surveillance and tracking. An operational perspective.

Summary: In the literature, several approaches to sensor (including radar) management can be found. These can be roughly grouped into: a) rule-based or heuristics; b) task-based; c) information-driven; and d) risk/threat-based. These approaches are compared in this dissertation and it is found that there is not a single approach that is both Bayes-optimal and takes into account explicitly the user requirements in different operational contexts.

In order to overcome the challenges with the existing approaches, this dissertation proposes managing the uncertainty in higher-level quantities (as per the JDL model) that are directly of interest to an operator and directly related to the operational goal of a radar system. The proposed approach is motivated by the threat assessment process, which is an integral part of defence missions. Accordingly, a prominent example of a commonly used higher-level quantity is the threat-level of a target.

The key advantage of the proposed approach is that it results in Bayes-optimal sensor control that also takes into account the operational context in a model-based manner. In other words: a) a radar operator can select the aspects of threat that are relevant to the operational context at hand; and b) external information about the arrival of targets and other scenario parameters can be included when defining the models used in the signal processing algorithms, leading to context-adaptive sensor management.